Distances

See Systems.

See Margins; Systems.

1. Choose the Staff tool .
2. Drag any staff up or down to move the staff vertically.

   You can drag more than one staff at a time if you choose several at once (by SHIFT-clicking or by drag-enclosing their handles, so that they’re highlighted). If you have many staves, you can move all except one or two as follows: Choose Edit > Select All to highlight the handles on all staves. Then SHIFT+click the staves you don’t want to move; when any staff is selected, a SHIFT+click “deselects” it. Then, as before, drag any selected staff to move all selected staves at once.

After you’ve experimented with dragging staves up and down, you may want to restore them to even spacing. See Staves—To space existing staves evenly.

1. Choose Window > Score Manager.
2. Choose Staff > Other. The Staff Setup dialog box appears.
3. Select Custom Staff.
4. In the Settings section, for Line Spacing, enter the space between each staff line. Finale rounds the number you enter to an even number of EVPUs (or equivalent).

The distance between the notes in each measure is determined by your choice of Allotment Library (see Document Options - Music Spacing). You can also drag individual notes horizontally in one staff (see Note positioning), and you can change the horizontal position of notes in all staves that fall on a certain beat (see Beat positions).

You can set various global distances in the Document Options - Clefs dialog box, Document Options - Key Signatures dialog box, and Document Options - Time Signatures dialog box. You will see the options on the right. Now, set the value for Space Before _ , or Space After _ to change the distance between the clef, key or time signature and the barline. The units are whatever you’ve selected using Edit > Measurement Units. Any measurement up or to the right are positive numbers; measurements down or to the left are negative.